Sage Same text with identical settings still displays fonts at different sizes

[Cactus Chef]

So here's a question that's been bubbling in my head for awhile now, because I could swear that I can switch from book to book and have the same main font, supplemental font, and font size set identically, yet on some books I've gotta bump up the font size considerably to get it readable. I happened to run into a prime example today, and so I thought I'd capture some photos and pose the question to the cadre of Kobo experts.

I've attached several screenshots (apologies for the glare, the only place with enough light was a bathroom). The first two are from the novela "The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula Le Guin out of the Again, Dangerous Visionsb anthology. The second pair of screenshots are the same text (same paragraph, as best I could get it) out of the standalone novel, The Word for World is Forest. You can see from the screenshots that the settings on both books are identical.

So my question is: why is the font so much smaller on the standalone version?

I assume it's gotta be some backend coding in the EPUB that is making it behave this way, but then why even have the font controls on the Kobo settings if it doesn't actually control the font in a consistent manner?

[Sirtel]

Sometimes the base font size is specified in the css, and it can vary considerably from book to book. Hence the difference you're seeing.

It's another stupid decision from the publishers, like the hard-coded line height and margin size. Ebooks don't need any of that, but they're still inserted in the css for no reason whatsoever.

That's why I edit my books. I remove any base font size other than 1em from the css. So all the books on my Kobos have the same body font size and I don't have to change it from book to book.

[DNSB]

I agree with Sirtel. I recently had one book that specified 0.75 em for the paragraph font size which I edited out. Without that, I had to increase the font slider by 3 taps to get a close to my preferred font size.

I also removed the 1.5 line height on everything (who needs a book that looks like it was double spaced), plus the 8.75 em above and the 10 em below margin/padding the chapter headers. Nothing like see 2 with blank space above and below sit it takes up 2/3 of the page to make you wonder about the ancestry of the person who formatted the ebook.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

...plus the 8.75 em above and the 10 em below margin/padding the chapter headers. Nothing like see 2 with blank space above and below sit it takes up 2/3 of the page to make you wonder about the ancestry of the person who formatted the ebook.

Oh yeah. I just recently posted a rant about this issue in the Reading Vent & Rant thread.

[rashkae]

It can be different font sizes in the books themselves. But also, if you are mixing epub/kepub, the font scale in reading settings is drastically different between the two, and you will have to adjust your preferences when switching between them.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rashkae

It can be different font sizes in the books themselves. But also, if you are mixing epub/kepub, the font scale in reading settings is drastically different between the two, and you will have to adjust your preferences when switching between them.

There's a patch for unifying font sizes between epub and kepub.

[JSWolf]

IMHO, there's no reason for a large waste of space for chapter headers.